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Power brokers, administration nominees and even the prime minister of Canada have travelled to Mar-a-Lago in recent weeks to meet with President-elect Donald Trump at his resort, making it a new center of political power.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg wealth reporter Amanda Gordon joins host David Gura to discuss Trump’s use of Mar-a-Lago in the lead-up to his inauguration, the impact he’s had on the surrounding area and South Florida’s growing influence on national politics.
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Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:
David Gura: Since former president Donald Trump became president-elect Donald Trump, he's hosted a parade of visitors at his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago — everyone from CEOs to world leaders… and administration hopefuls.
ABC: CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grateful for the Mar-a-Lago dinner invitation and the chance to meet with members of the incoming administration.
ABC: President-elect Donald Trump having an unannounced dinner at his Mar-a-Lago Club with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau…
Gura: This weekend, Trudeau and Trump had a three hour-long dinner there, discussing issues like trade and border policy.
Elon Musk danced to YMCA at Trump’s Thanksgiving dinner last week… as Trump has noted, he’s a frequent Mar-a-Lago visitor.
Donald Trump: You know, he likes this place. I can't get him out of here. He just likes this place. And you know what? I like having him here too. He's good.
Gura: Last month, just about a week after the election, Trump spoke at a black tie event held at the resort.
That gala was for a Trump-aligned think tank called the America First Policy Institute.
Amanda Gordon: One person described it as the Met Ball of Mar-a-Lago.
Gura: Amanda Gordon is a reporter on the wealth team at Bloomberg, and over the years, she’s kept tabs on South Florida society. And now, Amanda says, there are more and more events like that gala for that right-wing think tank.
Gordon: We can get just a sense of what it's like by reading the menu for the gala. The first course was Trump's Iceberg wedge. The second course was beef tenderloin and short rib, and the dessert was Trump chocolate cake. So, you're literally served Trump on a plate in the names of the dishes when you get to be at Mar-a-Lago.
Gura: As power dynamics shift from Washington, DC, to this moneyed barrier island…. How is Trump drawing from the area to shape his administration -- and will he transform the region in the process?
I’m David Gura, and this is the Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News.
Today on the show: inside Mar-a-Lago… Not just a presidential retreat - but the staging ground for Trump's campaign and now, the spot where he's planning his second presidency.
Bloomberg’s Amanda Gordon has spent a lot of time reporting on Mar-a-Lago, a club Donald Trump has owned for almost 40 years now.
These days, there are a lot of *rules about who’s allowed inside, and the membership fee has gotten more and more expensive. So I asked Amanda to describe what Mar-a-Lago looks like, when you arrive.
Gordon: So when you drive into Mar-a-Lago these days, past Secret Service detail that checks your ID and that makes sure you're in the right place, you go to a porte-cochère, which is an overhang right next to the mansion. And when you step out, there's someone to greet you.
You walk through a foyer with desks for the, people running the club, there's a brochure there with events for club members. There's bridge, there's croquet, there are spa services. So you get the idea. It feels like a place for pleasure, relaxation, for resort, as Palm Beach is known.
Gura: Mar-a-Lago was built in the 1920s by Marjorie Merriweather Post, heir to the Post cereal fortune.
She used the mansion for entertaining… it has 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms. Today, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index values Mar-a-Lago at $250 million. It’s designated a national historic landmark.
Gordon: It is like going to a historic home in Europe or in New England where the decor is a feast for the senses. It's tapestries, ornate tiles, Marjorie Merriweather Post, her architect worked as a set designer for the Met Opera and the Ziegfeld Follies, so I think that the theatricality of it appealed to Trump.
It feels very much as if you're walking into how it might have been used in the 1920s before the Great Depression.
Gura: Having a home away from the White House is not unusual for US presidents. John F. Kennedy also spent time in Palm Beach, and George W. Bush went to Crawford, Texas. Presidents also have access to Camp David, which has been a venue for negotiations.
Gordon: A place that's not the official office, that has more of a resort feel, is always a place where you can build relationships, build rapport. We have seen Trump use Mar-a-Lago for this very purpose, bringing heads of state. Victor Orbán was there, Bibi Netanyahu was there this summer. And Palm Beach is a small town and the houses are fairly close together. It's actually quite different from a resort that a lot of New Yorkers know, like the Hamptons, which is more spread out.
Palm Beach actually functions a little bit like New York and the bustle of the sidewalk, where you might well be able to walk down the main shopping drag and run into people.
Gura: And inside Mar-a-Lago… you might just bump into Trump himself...
Gordon: One of the things that he's known for is to come out and hit the iPad that controls the music that is played in the dining rooms. And he puts on his own music, and at one point, a woman who made a point of, you know, trying to spend time there, she told me that Elon Musk's song was, uh, Space Oddity, that, that's what he played for, for Elon. So I've heard of him sometimes just serving as the maitre d’. He'll stand at the desk and get people to their table.
He revels in it in this sort of, what is really a social space what, what potential cabinet member might they get a glimpse of right now?
Gura: There’s this public-private aspect to Mar-a-Lago that makes it different from the properties other presidents have retreated to.
As Amanda said, there is security… You can’t just wander in off the street. But it’s not totally inaccessible either.
Gordon: There's the fact that Trump is operating Mar-a-Lago as a club, and it means that you have people coming in and out in close proximity to Trump, and, that element is different. Everyone's looking at not just Trump, but who was going in and out of any particular door.
And I think it's also uncommon for this resort to be actually, very close to a place where office towers and apartment towers are rising, where the population has been growing at a very fast clip. For example, you didn't hear about people racing to buy homes in Crawford, Texas, even though it is the place where, George W. Bush, went to when he left the White House, when he left his office, and it's where he lives.
Gura: Mar-a-Lago is situated on a thin barrier island, separated from West Palm Beach by the Lake Worth Lagoon.
The name Mar-a-Lago means “sea to lake.” One side of the resort faces that lake, and the other side faces the Atlantic Ocean.
And it’s not the only notable property in the area.
Gordon: So, you have the north end, where Kennedy's winter White House was. And then you have a stretch south of Mar-a-Lago, which is known as Billionaire's Row, where Steve Schwartzman, for example, has a home.
Gura: … The CEO of Blackstone. Other homeowners on Billionaire’s Row include Steve Wynn, the founder of Wynn Resorts, investor John Paulson and Interactive Brokers Chair Thomas Peterffy.
And many of Trump’s well-heeled neighbors backed his campaign for president.
Gordon: Trump actually found many of his donors almost outside of his doorstep from the first term and in the second term who had homes or who had made their residence in Palm Beach or the elite environs around it.
Gura: Despite Trump’s growing influence in South Florida, it hasn’t been a Republican stronghold. But Palm Beach County is undergoing some of the political changes we’re seeing across the country.
Gordon: In Palm Beach County, it is a county that has most often voted for the Democrat and gone towards the Democrat in the presidential election.
Gura: Interesting.
Gordon: However, what people in Florida are realizing and what we've all realized with the results of this election, is that there is more support for Republicans than has been. There has been a shift. And Harris actually won the county by a margin of some 5,500 votes, margins in the past have been 95,000 votes.
Gura: Amanda says, Palm Beach has been changing over the past decade—and that's not just because of its most famous resident.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many wealthy Americans started to spend more time there, trying to turn it into what some people call “the Wall Street of the South.”
Gordon: A dream that has long been the hope of the Florida business development folks, and the builder who's probably most responsible for that is Steve Ross, who has now moved from New York, where he built Hudson Yards and is living full time in Palm Beach. One of the interesting developments that's taking place is that he's helping bring a new campus for Vanderbilt to West Palm. NYU Langone, Mount Sinai, the hospital for, for special surgery, they have all opened outposts. So there is this New York influx of quality healthcare. There's a boon to education and that sort of intellectual capital that will come out of that.
And this is really distinct from Trump's evolution, but the goal has been to turn this place of resort into a serious, year-round, thriving community diverse in its economics so that it does not rely on tourism.
Gura: That goal got a big boost when Trump pulled up stakes, left New York City and made Palm Beach his new home and political center.
After the break... the president-elect is increasingly looking to South Florida to staff his administration...
Towards the end of his first term, in 2019, Donald Trump left New York City, where he was born and raised, and made his fortune. He officially became a Floridian.
And Bloomberg’s Amanda Gordon says now that Mar-a-Lago is his primary residence, it means something different to him now, in 2024, than it used to.
Gordon: I think what's different this time around is that he's been living there as his primary residence for the past four years, and the campaign that he ran really was run out of Palm Beach, out of Mar-a-Lago, and out of offices in West Palm Beach. So, there's already a lot of staff. And Susie Wiles is from Florida, so, you know, there's a sort of a Florida flavor to the, to the whole thing.
Gura: Wiles will be Donald Trump's chief of staff in his second term, and she was his campaign manager in 2024. His new attorney general pick, Pam Bondi, is also a Floridian. She’s the state’s former attorney general. Dave Weldon, his CDC nominee? A former Florida Congressman. And John Phelan, who Trump wants to be the next Secretary of the Navy… is an investor based in Palm Beach.
In this transition period before Trump's inauguration in January… his nominees have been Mar-a-Lago regulars.
Gordon: It's basically become a workplace for interviews, for Cabinet positions. And for policy ideas and strategizing.
It's an interesting place to be right now because there is this, one person called it joyful atmosphere, but it's also very intense because you know that these major appointments and sort of trying to set the direction of what his next four years will be like as president, they are taking place behind these closed doors. A few people have used the analogy of hunger games.
And yes, there are members there for their lunches, for their spa appointments, for their tennis games. And there are also people there who are hoping to catch a glimpse of the next president. Some have opportunity, business opportunity, social opportunity in mind to get a face to face, a political opportunity in mind. There are lobbyists who are looking to rent office space and also buy homes because that proximity means something.
Gura: In the meantime, Florida’s political significance is undeniable. Policies Florida pioneered are already spreading to other states… like we saw during COVID. The state’s governor opposed lockdowns, and put restrictions on what can be taught in schools. Florida has become something of a policy incubator.
Gordon: What DeSantis has been doing with education, not everybody is a fan, but his commitment to school choice for example has a lot of fans outside of the state, and we can all go back to the year 2000 when Florida really did play a big dramatic role in determining the outcome of the election.
There are tailwinds for Florida being taken seriously, among all the red states that have been developing economically and seeing an increase in population, gains in House seats because of those increases in population.
Gura: It’s an open question how much time Trump will spend in Florida once he takes office in January. But it’s clear many political operators think Trump will be in Palm Beach more than he was during his first term.
You mentioned lobbyists relocating their building offices there, considering getting homes there. Are we seeing a real shift in the center of political power to South Florida, do you think?
Gordon: There are some dynamics in Florida politics that have yet to play out, so we still have to see what happens. Trump is, can be unpredictable. But in any case, Florida really is on the map as a center of power and wealth and a place that matters in the national political conversation.
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